HEALTHY, WEALTHY, AND WISE

Frank and his wife, Miranda are in their late 60’s, living on their meager retirement pensions and government subsidies. Frank goes out for his daily walk after having a major heart attack in his 50’s without missing a day. While he takes his walk around their large energetic town, Frank likes to collect aluminum cans. The town’s people have become so accustom to Frank’s can collecting that many just set the bags of cans on the curb for his walk. When Frank returns home from his walks, he puts the aluminum cans in his classic Oldsmobile Coupe, changes out of his walking sneakers for his relaxed loafers, drives over to the next town to recycle the aluminum cans and collect the money for each can recycled. Miranda and the rest of the town’s people do not really pay attention to the money that he collects for their aluminum cans but feel rather relieved that they, themselves do not have to make the unnecessary and out of the way trip to the recycling center. To most people, the cans are just trash so they discard them but for Frank, it keeps him walking and he has a little extra pocket money. Once he has turned in his days collection of cans, Frank takes out his trusty little black book, writes the date in one column, number of cans that he turned in for recycling in another column and in the last column he writes the amount of money that he received. Only Frank knows about this little black book, that he keeps in his glovebox of his classic car.

One day in late spring, Frank finished his routine walk and prepared to make his drive, but his classic Oldsmobile Coupe, that he has enjoyed driving for over fifteen years, will not start. Frank attempts to get the car to start and succeeds after jumpstarting it. He drives down the road but since it is such an older car the radio no longer works. He enjoys the silence of his drive to the recycling center each day, but this day was different. The classic Oldsmobile Coupe is making unusual sounds. Frank loves this car so much, that he does all the maintenance himself, however something was terribly wrong this time. Frank reduced his speed, turned on his emergency flashers on the car since he was driving under the suggested speed limit, and he made it to the recycling center. Once he finished his transaction at the Recycling Center, Frank must jumpstart the car again to drive it home. “What could possibly be causing the problem with the car?”, thought Frank on his drive home. He made it home safely and slowly but was upset that he could not figure out what was wrong with his favorite classic car. He tried to start the car again, but it would not start this time. He went into the house and told Miranda about his adventure with the Oldsmobile coupe on this day’s trip. She had a worried look on her face and asked Frank, “Perhaps it was time to finally buy a new car? However, with our tight finances where would the money come from to buy the new car?” Frank did not know what to tell Miranda, except that they would find a way to buy a new car. Frank went out to the car and pulled the little black book from the glovebox, then went inside the house to his office desk. He sat down, took out his calculator, opened his little black book, and started tallying up the transactions that he had been keeping track of over time. He was happy and shocked to find that the transactions added up to over $36,000 since he started taking his walks. However, that was not what he had stashed away in various spots in the house. He got up from his desk and took the moneys out of the various hiding spots in the house. He sat down at his desk, counted out all the money he gathered, and found that he had $20,000 in cash!

Frank was so excited but contained his excitement to not let on to Miranda, that he had enough money to buy a new car in all cash. Miranda and Frank called a tow truck to pick up the classic Oldsmobile Coupe, deliver them and the car to the dealership in their town. When they arrived at the dealership, Frank told Miranda to go ahead of him to pick out a car, while he stopped to talk to a salesperson. Frank explained that he was trading in the Classic Oldsmobile but that he was also using all cash to complete the sale. Frank and the salesperson met up with Miranda at the beautiful Chevrolet that she had picked out. Frank smiled at Miranda when he realized that she had chosen an American-made Car. Miranda and Frank purchase the car that they test drove and paid it in full, so they would not have a car payment. When they returned home, Miranda finally asked Frank how they were able to leave the dealership with a new car completely free and clear of a car payment. Frank showed Miranda his secret little black book of transactions. She was surprised at how clever her husband, Frank had been. Miranda breathed a sigh of relief. She was so happy that his daily walks were productive, healthy, and extraordinarily rewarding.